Inside The Bills

Bills head coach Doug Marrone was making an effort to classify EJ Manuel’s knee injury, which required surgery, as minor. To that end he left the door open for Manuel to potentially play in the team’s season opener against New England.

Marrone was asked if it would be tough for him to go with EJ Manuel in the opener if he misses two weeks of practice.

“No, because I look at every position and again it’s the same thing and I know that position gets a lot of attention,” said Marrone. “But it’s the same thing whether it’s the guard position, the tackle position, the defensive end position. We’re going to put the best players out there.”

Marrone elaborated on Manuel’s chances to be a consideration for the season opener when he was asked what measure of confidence team doctors gave him that the Bills top draft pick would be ready for Week 1.

“He could,” Marrone said. “There is a good chance of that and the problem I have with that is again, a lot of it is just how he comes back. Again there goes the variable thing of when he comes back and missed time… nobody really starts where they left off. We saw that with Kevin and we saw that with EJ. The first game EJ goes in there and you see early on a little of the footwork, a little of the jitters and then all of a sudden he get in a rhythm and starts throwing very well and throwing very accurately.”